Social Media Academy NCP Model

One way to move social business forward is to be social yourself. That means following a practice model like I do from the Social Media Academy for NCP – Network, Contribute, Participate.  Its hard work to do all three steps, but each one is critical to your success personally, and by extension to your organization. One of the ways I participate is to spend some time each week reading and commenting on blogs and shared content on the web. Here are a few of my responses from the comment sections.

What’s Quirky and why is this man talking about Luxury and Gen Y together?

Comments on  L2 conference Video of  Ben Kaufman, CEO of Quirky.com on the subject of Social Product Development:

WSS: I had the great opportunity to meet Ben in person at the #CoCreatePDMA, Social Product Development Conference. Wonderful guy with vision, passion, and too many good ideas for one head.  He is working to make ideas real, and make money to boot.  Seeing and hearing Ben talk about Social Product Development and the stories he has to tell about ideas taken through a process all the way to Bed Bath and Beyond to be sold, enlightened me on where social can really extend entrepreneurs into real production, also help, those without all the finances, a chance to succeed.

Shankman:  “I Will Never Hire a “Social Media Expert,” and Neither Should You”

Peter Shankman can be brash and annoying. He seems to get away with it. Sometimes, a blog post is written just to get reactions as this one did for me.

Update – 07/15/11 – the link to this article was killed by the blog but here is the link in text if you would like to visit his post http://shankman.com/i-will-never-hire-a-social-media-expert-and-neither-should-you/

Shankman:  “I was going to call this article “All “Social Media Experts” need to go die in a fire,” but I figured I should be nicer than that.  But my title stands. If you call yourself a “Social Media Expert,” don’t even bother sending me your resume. No business in the world should want a “Social Media Expert” on their team. They shouldn’t want a guru, rock-star, or savant, either. If you have a “Social Media Expert” on your payroll, you’re wasting your money. Being an expert in Social Media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can’t do that if all you’ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.  Social Media is just another facet of marketing and customer service. Say it with me. Repeat it until you know it by heart. Bind it as a sign upon your hands and upon thy gates. Social Media, by itself, will not help you.”
####

WSS:  “Harsh!
Point 1: I speak to corporations and groups on the topic of social media in the business to business space. I have never used the word expert or guru in my materials I have supplied. They always stick it in. I always rephrase and explain I am just someone who is spending 20 hours a day trying to keep up with the social media channel and integrate 30 years of experience in business development and marketing with cross functional teams.

Point 2: In the social space, there is a saying “speed is more important than perfection.” Sometimes that means less time for proof reading and some feel that is justification. However, I would never want to work for a company where a boss wrote such a negative statement on a resume (and returned it to the applicant) I hope she/he loses a job when they forget to dot an “i”.

Point 3: Somehow social media makes people think they can be so transparent that they are rude, hurtful and hateful, even if they write with perfect grammar and punctuation.

Signed
A sales engineer working on better writing skills but always willing to hire a professional.

Can the SPAM

In response to Barbara Giamanco talking about SPAM in our social media

Giamanco: “If you’ve ever read a blog post of mine, heard me speak or follow some of my musings on LinkedIn and Twitter, you know that I really hate it when I receive sales spam in my email and/or LinkedIn inbox from people that I do not know. Whether it is a cold call or a cold email, it is still cold.  The effective use of technology presents huge opportunities for the savvy salespeople who get it. These rock stars know that using social media gives them an avenue for building relationships and demonstrating expert credibility BEFORE sales opportunities present themselves. There are however, too many salespeople using technology as a way to send the same boring, boilerplate sales spam to anyone with an email address.

WSS:  Barbara, this post really hit home for me because I am getting slammed with LinkedIn Sales SPAM.  Here was the latest – someone sent me a invite with a custom message (seemed fair enough and it was with a company I might want to learn more about), which I accepted with a reply message that I look forward to see his activity on LI. The next day I got an email SPAM sales letter that I ignored since I didn’t ask for any of the materials or have the time. The following day I got a phone call from a middle east country with a sales pitch. This is happening more frequently since the “sales” teams are getting shut down on email.

I hate to see LinkedIn get abused this way.  I am going to start build a wall of shame for these sales SPAM emails so I can generate an example post like this! Thanks for reminding everyone on the sales side not to “be that guy.

How did you participate in your social ecosystem this week?  Share in the comments.

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Axel Schultze, founder of the Social Media Academy, recently challenged Xeesm.com users to review their social

Xeesm - Social Business Relationship Management

visit graph generated by Xeesm.com, and compare with others by posting on the Xeesm Facebook page. I was surprised at what the visual said about the trends in where people go and which ones have grown or shifted over time.

Social business relationship management

Xeesm is one of the tools I work with to manage my social business relationships.   It is many things besides a social address book. In an effort to help build social relationships and use one link on my business card and emails,  I direct contacts to my Xeesm profile.  This allows my connections to find the place they wish to socialize with me by listing the sites, groups, blogs and methods they can use. In working on my social ecosystem over the past year, I have researched new tools, added several social sites and communities, stepped away from others and increased my activity in core sites of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Xeesm and Slideshare.

Social ecosystem development

While today I am active on many social sites, I started using social media communities over 7 years ago as a business tool. At that time, LinkedIn was my focus to  build a network of past colleagues and clients in the B2B markets where I have worked.  In the past 2-3 years, I have found more sites that helped me achieve my business goals with a strategy of thought leadership and knowledge sharing, reputation management, and social business relationship development with business to business organizations.

At the time, I didn’t think FaceBook would be a large driver. In fact, like many who are joining in the 35-55 age group, my twenty something children thought I was stalking them. Well, maybe there was some slight truth to that.  Using Slideshare was also a big part of my focus, since I post many presentations on the site as part of my NCP Model of contribution.

I did however want to maintain both a social and business persona on all my sites just as I do on my LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. Additional sites that fit my strategy include  Scribd, Quora, Youtube, Blogger, Flickr and Google.

What does the trend show?

Xeesm.com/wendysoucie Site Visit Report 2009

What can be seen in the graph from 2009, 2010 and even early in 2011 on my own Xeesm, is that there are generally equal spreads of visits on the top tier and the secondary tier of sites.  Things I noted:

• People seem to visit many of the sites posted, but from curiosity or real need its hard to tell.
• I had fewer sites in 2009 than in 2010 posted on my Xeesm address page.
• Twitter and Facebook were much stronger drivers than I expected.

Blogging the business driver

Surprising at first was that Twitter is one of the top three for me along with my blog and website which are part of my strategy. I am not a daily Tweeter, and don’t often tweet from my phone (HTC windows based

Xeesm.com/wendysoucie Site visit report 2010

smart phone – what can I say, I need US Cellular service).

I do however strategically tie my blog to Twitter and while in LinkedIn selectively share my updates with my Twitter profiles. I actually think my blog activity (Wendy Soucie Consulting, Network Mindshare – on Blogger, WISocialMedia on Amplify, Madison Social Media Examiner on Examiner.com) is the driver on this but I need to look at it more closely.

The rest of the sites are very equal in visits at least from Xeesm to the sites.

It is true that Twitter is an easier place to engage and follow. You don’t need to have much info to follow and get to know them.  LinkedIn, perhaps has more protocol and where connection request can look more suspicious depending on the profile you have shared.  There, in order to connect,  you need to have an email, an introduction, Inmail, or group connection to interact.  On Twitter you can just click on the “follow” button.

In my social graphs, those that have the fewest connection points are either the newest accounts or the ones I am on least. It does make the case to reduce a few that I show in the public Xeesm profile.

Looking into 2011

Xeesm.com/WendySoucie site visit report for 2011

If I look at the progression since 2009 into 2011 we can see a slight shifting, as Xeesm added more selections, and my social ecosystem and footprint increased. For 2009, the category of “others” was 35% while Twitter held 11%, LinkedIn 8%, and Facebook 8%.  In the 2010 screenshot, “others” represented 47%, Twitter, 12%, LinkedIn 4%, and Facebook 5%.  As I began broadening my exposure and spreading out, the activity dropped initially on FB and LinkedIn.

I can see that Twitter has held consistant – given it is the easiest to view and connect.  Overall the the charts vary but the pie sections remain general constant even if they have increased.

After looking at several other highly connected individuals, the general dispersement among the wedges takes on a general similarity. The point is that with the increase in networks, it has not settled down to just the big 3 or 4.

What does your social ecosystem look like?

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College students are on the hunt for internships and recent graduates are starting new jobs. Employers who have been thinking of social media are evaluating these new recruits and all their skills.  Including whether they understand and can use social media tools.  Organizations who have been waiting for “something” to get started with social media have decided – “Let’s give it to Mikey, he will eat it” (quote from a historic Life cereal commercial).

I have heard of several instances of seasoned and resourceful social media consultants who have lost a project because the client found a college student who uses Facebook and is now assigned the taste of promoting a $10 or $50 Million business.  Is this the way we should be thinking about social media for our business? The old adage “You get what you pay for” is true in this space as well.

What happens when students go back to school in the fall? Social media is a long-term commitment which doesn’t bode well with a summer intern.

Honestly I have nothing against college students and recent graduates.  I am helping several find good entry level positions. I am even considering working with an college intern on a event promotion, with much guidance and direction for administrative duties.  However, I can say that most students do not yet have a business sense about them at all. That is something that comes from earned time in the field. Even in the recent channel of social media.

For starters, I’d be happy with someone who was capable of producing readable, spell-checked, clear writing. That’s probably the hardest part. Beyond that, I would want someone with a level of comfort with constant/rapid change and/or adaptability. The tools I need them to use are the easiest to learn and teach.

Paula Berg previously with Southwest Airlines, who I heard speak last Fall at UW Whitewater Social Media and PR Summit, had this to say in a recent Huffington Post article:

Paula Berg: Revolutionizing Corporate Communication: 6 Tips for Integrating Social Media and Inspiring Organizational Change

“Tip #5 – Social Media is not for entry level employees.  Fear still appears to be a primary factor preventing companies from truly embracing social media. And if they’ve tasked a 22 year-old intern to manage their efforts, I don’t blame them.

You wouldn’t send an intern to speak to The Wall Street Journal on your behalf, and, likewise, you shouldn’t send them to broadcast messages to the entire world online. Social media deserves seasoned and trusted employees.

At Southwest Airlines, our Emerging Media Team had 70 combined years of service to the airline in almost every field. I was a nearly 10-year employee who knew our customer and public relations inside and out. Brian Lusk was a 30-year veteran of the industry with Rain Man-like knowledge of aircraft, operations, and aviation history. Christi Day had five relatives that worked at Southwest Airlines; she was practically raised at the company and knew the culture instinctively. We made mistakes, and we got our hands slapped occasionally; but, together, we had the knowledge, experience, judgment and trust to do the job well.”

via Paula Berg: Revolutionizing Corporate Communication: 6 Tips for Integrating Social Media and Inspiring Organizational Change.

Wow, 70 years of combined service! How many years of social media experience does your team have?

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By  Jay Yarow and Kamelia Angelova | May 27, 2010, 4:17 PM

“A video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.That’s a really short life span for YouTube videos, and it’s probably getting shorter. In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.Why? In the last two years, YouTube has improved its user interface, which helps videos get seen early on. Also, the world has gotten more adept at embedding and sharing videos in real-time via Twitter and Facebook. And there’s probably more video to choose from.”

via CHART OF THE DAY: The Half-Life Of A YouTube Video Is 6 Days.

In My Opinion -Wendy’s note.  The article is looking at statistics provided thru TubeMogul one of the major share sites for video syndication. I can see that hot breaking news would clearly fall under this category.  I think that with more long lived videos such as “How to’s”, guides, training, and testimonial videos the same statistics don’t apply.  They didn’t qualify the type of video in the data. It might be interesting to see statistics on the most long lived videos…

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According to Marketing Sherpa’s latest research:

Considering that social marketing is at a very early stage in its life cycle, a 7% confidence rating indicating that it’s producing measurable ROI and therefore should be funded liberally, is outstanding.

Conservative budget increases by half of all organizations at budget time — based on the promise that social media will eventually produce ROI — demonstrate another vote of confidence in the tactic for the longer term.

via MarketingSherpa: New Chart: How is Social Media Perceived at Budget Time?.

Wendy’s Note: Where does social media as a channel belong in your business budget? If you only view it as a marketing tactic, you are wrong. If you only view it as a sales tactic, you may be sorry.  Maybe you are not ready for a huge line item in your budget, but this research suggests that you budget more than Zero.

Social media doesn’t work well started in a vacuum and separated from the other points of customer engagement within a company. As you consider building your listening station, creating your strategy and assigning resources within the company, begin a “right size” effort that you can commit to.  Then relocate budget allocations from customer service, human resources, product development as well as sales and marketing.  You may easily create a budget that will get one or two individuals spending 20 minutes per day doing what we all really want – building business relationships before, during and after the sale.

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“Three CRM titans Bob Thompson, Paul Greenberg and Denis Pombriant are discussing probably one of the hottest topic in customer relationship strategies.

Bob Thompson raised a very controversial question: Can you do “Social CRM” without Social Media/Networks? Or Without CRM systems?

Paul Greenberg wrote a profound point of view, challenging the reader to think through what CRM really is supposed to do for an organization and their customers. “Thinking it Through Some More: More on What Else? ”

Social CRM. A pretty surprising – or not so surprising counter post was written by thought leader and analyst Denis Pombriant: Can you do social without social technology?”

via Social CRM a strategy, a philosophy has it also technology? – Axel Schultze Social Media Academy.

Wendy’s Note: With thought leaders like these weighing in on what  Social CRM is or is not, I thought it worth sharing.  Over the next few weeks I will be sharing my efforts in making the change to a Social CRM tool Xeesm.com.

You may have noticed my social link profile at xeesm.com/wendysoucie.  The latest application on the road map just introduced in April 2010 is the Xeesm – Edge Social CRM which is the flagship product.

As a long time business development and marketing executive, CRM applications are what keep me organized – at least around the data I collect. With my deep dive into social media in the B2B space, how could I use anything else to manage my relationships with my audience.

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“Ah, engagement. That sticky word that gets discussed an awful lot in context of social media conversations. But how, exactly, do you look at engagement and keep tabs on the factors that drive it?”

via 10 Key Engagement Metrics to Track « Social Media Monitoring and Engagement – Radian6.

Wendy’s Note: On April 8, 2010 I attended the PR and Social Media Summit at Marquette University. The line up of speakers was excellent, including Amber Nashlund of Radian 6.  Since our Social Media Breakfast Madison group is just starting an effort on tracking and measuring social media results – this post by Amber seemed important to share.

What you measure you can manage.

The key to all the discussion on measuring and tracking is what you measure you can manage. Since we need to know what social media tools work best to achieve our business goals, we need to track. The 80/20 rule works on social media as well. 80% of our revenue is derived from 20% of our efforts. It would be important to know how much time you are spending totally on your social media and on which tools and actions.  When you begin to get results, tracking back to these numbers will be key.

I hope you join us for the next Social Media Breakfast Madison on April 21st at Talula Restaurant (7:30 am registration/networking, 8:00 start) Check out our LinkedIn group (Social Media Breakfast Madison) for more details.

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via How LinkedIn will fire up your career – Mar. 25, 2010.

Wendy’s Note:

I am a little biased to the writer’s point of view in this article as a trainer for Integrated Alliances on LinkedIn and other social media tools.  LinkedIn as a business networking site has really gained momentum in the past 6 months. I would guess that it aligns with the increase in unemployed professionals across the country.

I run a couple of groups on LinkedIn, one for Alumni of the University of Rhode Island (my alma mater).  In the past 3-4 months I have an average of 20 – 80 people joining my group each week.  So while it is true that for your online reputation management and job search you should be on LinkedIn, I would recommend that you be on this — or any other business networking site– with a complete profile that is written with keywords in mind.

First impressions demand a complete social media profile

First impressions are created when anyone looks at your profile.  If you are trying to build a solid network, how would it look with no picture, a generic, blase headline, and a one sentence past job and role descriptions?  Here’s a few tips for you to get started on cleaning up your LinkedIn profile

Picture – Use a basic headshot picture from any digital camera, no professional help needed.

• A clean, white background is best.
• Do not use group photos or logo’s. No one will know which one your are.
• Upload up to a 4Mb file and the system has a cropping tool. The final picture is quite small – 80 x 80 pixels.

If you would like more advice on how to take a good profile photo consider this post on tips for headshots and photos

Headline – This is the most important section on your profile.  On LinkedIn this field defaults to current job title at current employer.  When you add or change the headline, it does not change the current job however.  Use interesting, compelling, targeted keywords to attract interest. This is critical in attracting people to click through from search listings.

• Limited to 140 characters – use wisely.
• Search LinkedIn for the job title you are interested and consider who shows in the result page.
• Use the Google keyword tool if you don’t know what terms to use that fit your job interests.

Summary – Think of it as a brochure and a business Bio. Begin with how helpful you are to others, make people want to help you in return.

• Only include current and relevant information as this is a high-level overview.
• This is not an historical area unless the history remains part of the current and future.
• Formatting is limited to ALL CAPS, some special keyboard characters (~ > | #) and symbols that can be pulled in from Word (see above).
• You get 2,000 characters (about 2/3 of a printed page) to work with.

Specialties – While the Summary section is like a brochure, with complete sentences and fancy formatting, the Specialties section is a place that resembles a list – a list of keywords like in a Search Engine sense.

• Create a list of keywords, then look at the variations of these words and then look at synonyms and variants of the synonyms (see below).
• You have 500 characters to work with (about 2 paragraphs).

Experience (Work History) – What to include? How far to go back? What to say? The Best Practice is to include every employer since college. This creates more opportunities for you to create relationships with others.

• If you had multiple positions at a company, use the highest position held.
• Do NOT simply copy/paste in data from a resume.
• Use years only, no months needed.
• You get lot’s of space, 2,000 characters, so make use of it!

What to say? For each position, state the following:

1. What does the company do?
2. Who do they do it for?
3. Where do they operate?
4. What was your role?
5. What made you special there?

You are competing with over 60,000 profiles on LinkedIn so do your utmost to make your profile get found in the crowd by recruiters, customers and vendors.

Do you have questions on how to improve your profile on LinkedIn?  Please ask in the comments section, or connect with me on LinkedIn and reference this post.  I will provide a free review and recommendation.

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“First and foremost, interviews are connected to credibility. We have been trained to think that if a person is interviewed about something, then they must have a special insight into the topic about which they’re being asked. In other words, if you’re worthy of an interview, you must know what you’re talking about. And do you realize that you can interview yourself? It’s quite common to see an interview on the nightly news that only shows the interviewee, and never the person asking the questions. Sometimes you don’t even hear the questions being asked. So instead of looking right at the camera, look off to the side and pretend to be answering someone’s questions. See how that could be good for selling something?”

via The Art of Filming an Interview | Top One Report.

In my opinion

If you are thinking about doing video interviews of yourself or your clients, this is a must read article.  I myself have been doing interviews of Wisconsin businesses who are using social media using my Flip Video camera.  My intent was to find more examples of business using social media and try to document the answers to the very questions being asked of me.

Breakfast and Video

The Social Media Breakfast Madison just had a great presentation by Requisite Video on video guidelines.  We talked about how to make choices when it comes to video.   Sandy Kallio one of the attendees was nice enough to provide a good recap of the event and I have added embellishments so please check out that post here: Do It Yourself Video | Requisite Video Speaks at SMB Madison

FaceBook Fan Page Ideas

Brandyn Olson , Requisite Video talked about Requisite Video’s  Facebook fan page being more active than his Website during the recent Social Media Breakfast Madison.  He also shared his strategy to spread content over Facebook and YouTube vs. pages hidden behind pages on the company Web site.

There is a strategy of posting video to different social sites.  There is a different appreciation of the narrative that should be placed in the specific social site context.  That strategy for posting to Twitter vs. LinkedIn vs. FaceBook vs. YouTube can really help the link follow and interest by your followers.

Wendy Soucie Consulting Facebook Fan Page - Youtube tab

Some people don’t believe that FaceBook is the best place to upload your video. The more common approach is to upload to YouTube and link to FaceBook.  It means that you friends and Fans cannot easily find those videos again from the video page.  If you are posting your videos solely to FaceBook page, you should watch your Insights and track the activity.

In testing out this premise,  I found out that you can create a tabbed page with a third party YouTube plug-in.  It seems to be working OK so far on the Wendy Soucie Consulting FaceBook page.

How to measure the impact of video

The way to get new business is through networking and social media interaction. It’s up to you to decide what success looks like and begin to track the key factors that might drive new leads and revenue. Make sure that each video has a call to action at the beginning, middle and end.

• Track total ecosystem numbers in all social spaces
• Ask fans questions about video
• Track comments
• Track links and embeds
• Track favorites
• Track subscriptions
• Track views
• Track action by using landing pages for each social site on your “home”
• Track marketing actions with track able phone numbers.

Through YouTube, you can see how long people are watching before they leave – meaning they might miss the call to action at the end.  This might clue you in to shorten up your videos and insert a call to action in the middle of the clip.

Consider having a script for the interview, to stay on message which can really help you be more organized.

When NOT to do it yourself.

• When you’re not sure what results you want
• When you’re not sure what your message is,
• When your goals are not achievable with the tools and resources you have
• When you’re branding yourself or your company.
• When your time is worth more than the cost to hire a professional

Consider professional help for these opportunities to make a great first impression.

Please share your video experience and stories in the comments.

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The state and future of Twitter is passionately debated as users and industry pundits explore whether or not the platform and the relationships that connect one another are in danger of slowing or worse, regressing. Over the last year, Twitter experienced its most phenomenal growth to date, fueled by the adoption of the communication network by highly visible and influential personalities that attracted legions of new users to establish one-to-many and ultimately many-to-many connections. But, then the meteoric ascent practically leveled-off…

via Social Media Today | The State of the Twittersphere 2010.

In preparation for an upcoming workshop on Twitter for Business 201, I will be watching for important information and blog posts offered by the thought leaders in social media. Brian Solis, in this post, is assessing the latest research and results from HubSpot on Twitter trends.  As you look at the latest numbers, consider my Twitter for Business post in January that talked about  Gartner and the Trough of Dillusionment coming with social media.

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